of the New World marching in chains to prison!

While Columbus had not been a successful ruler, it must be borne in mind
that the men he was expected to rule were a most ungovernable lot. But
even so, it is difficult to believe that among them all there was not
one big enough to forget that the man who had been an unsatisfactory
colonial governor had been the bravest explorer ever known. But no, they
were pitiless. His own cook was ordered to fasten the chains on him. The
onlookers exulted in his disgrace; and their outcries were so loud and
so bitter that Columbus and his brothers expected every moment to be put
to death.

Bobadilla lost no time in deciding what to do with his prisoners. They
must be put out of the way, but not by death. Instead, he ordered a
nobleman named Villejo to take them at once to Spain. When Villejo, with
some soldiers, entered the cell in order to remove the prisoners to the
ship, Columbus thought he was to be escorted to the scaffold. "I see I
am to die," he said calmly. Villejo, who seems to have been the only man
in San Domingo with an ounce of humanity in him, answered kindly, "I am
to escort you to a ship, Your Excellency, and then home to Spain."

As they marched to the shore, a rabble followed, shouting every insult
imaginable. And thus did Christopher Columbus sail away, for the third
time, from the island which he had found so quiet and peaceful that he
once wrote, "The nights are lovely, like May nights in Cordova." Here
was a change indeed!

When the caravel was under way, Villejo offered to remove the Admiral's
shackles.